Archive for November 3rd, 2013

The chaotic launch of President Barack Obama’s healthcare law has Democrats in Congress increasingly anxious about its potential impact on them in the 2014 elections and scrambling to protect themselves if the program’s problems persist.

Except it seems that after two solid weeks of demagoguery, Obamacare’s popularity — and the belief of Americans that the GOP shouldn’t be holding America hostage in order to undo Obamacare — hasn’t budged.

The gold standard of health care polling, the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, is out for October and shows once again that the public is basically behind Obamacare, with significantly more wanting to keep it or expand it than to repeal it. Despite all of the Republicans’ efforts to sabotage it, public opinion about Obamacare has held steady, 44 percent unfavorable versus 38 percent favorable, but large majorities are still opposed to Republican sabotage.

A solid majority of the public (60 percent) say they oppose the idea of cutting off funding as a way to stop the law from being implemented, and a higher share would like to see Congress expand the law or keep it as is (47 percent) rather than repeal it (37 percent). Partisan divisions are as deep as ever, with four in ten Democrats saying the want Congress to expand the law, and a similar share of Republicans (42 percent) wanting to see the law repealed and not replaced.

In really bad news for Republicans, the public does not share their obsession with Obamacare. At all.

Thirty-seven percent see it as a good idea, versus 47 percent who see it as a bad idea. That’s down from the 38 percent good idea, 43 percent bad idea in the previous survey. […]

In the poll, 37 percent say that the website woes are a short-term technical problem that can be fixed, while 31 percent believe they point to a longer-term issue with the law’s design that can’t be corrected.

Another 30 percent think it’s too soon to say.

Which makes Obamacare, again, more popular than Republicans. By 15 points.

The GOP’s shutdown silliness reminded me of 1995 and 1996. The insistence on demagoguing something when it’s not doing the GOP any good politically reminds me of 1998, when the public rejected their attempts to take down Bill Clinton over his personal life.